


sunset in númenor

by MissAntlers



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Human Sacrifice, Minor Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon, also? this is numenor so there's a wee bit of, and blood, mairon's hardcore pining, mairon's having a hard time getting over his old boss, so mind how you go if that's not your jam, super super angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 11:33:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14260062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAntlers/pseuds/MissAntlers
Summary: Mairon had known worse living than Armenelos––but, oh, if he had to listen to another of Ar-Pharazôn’s monologues about the woes of mortality then he was quite certain he would cut off his own ears.





	sunset in númenor

Armenelos looked different in the rain. The colour seemed eked out of the city, the rooftops, pillars and courtyards all a dull mirror of the grey sky overhead. The clouds hung low so that it looked as though the spires and columns of the palace were scraping at their underbellies. Water collected in the dips between the cobbles, giving the main courtyard a glassy countenance, and everywhere the chill seeped into flowers and fabric, wilting all life for an hour or so.

Mairon sat upon the windowsill in the turret room, listening to the drizzle against the thin pane. He hugged himself tighter, and adjusted his thick brocaded quilt so that it covered his bare feet. He hated it when it rained. Such days confined him to the palace, and more often than not, to the company of the king.

Life since his coming to Armenelos had, on the whole, not been unpleasant. The city was fair and elegant, as were its people, and they dressed him in bright heavy fabrics and cloth-of-gold, which matched his eyes. The climate was mild and the winds gentle, and he could wander where he liked. On particularly sticky days, he would douse his frayed nerves in wine and forget his place in Creation until night breathed coolly on his brow and brought him back. He bathed in fountains, and ate sweet meats and honey and apricots off the navels of servants, and he had a page who would brush his hair until it shone like mother-of-pearl. Truly, Mairon had known worse living––but, oh, if he had to listen to another of Ar-Pharazôn’s monologues about the woes of mortality then he was quite certain he would cut off his own ears.

He sighed and watched his breath fog up the window for a moment. The water made it hard to see anything, but if he peered between the raindrops he could make out the construction in the courtyard, presently abandoned in the ill weather. There so far existed a great but crude stone plinth, as yet unfinished, and beside it a mighty shape, thrice the size of any man, bound in leather to protect it from the elements. Beneath those coverings was a face he longed to see again, sculpted in white marble, and so true in likeness that he had shuttered himself away in his room when first he saw it. He had wanted to weep, but no tears would come.

“Hmm,” he murmured to the rain. “We’d have made quick work of this place, my lord… You and I.”

Faces were strange things. After the last great battle, Mairon had travelled east, to places they had not yet been. He knew not what he had hoped to find there––he was not naïve enough to have sought peace, but _respite_ perhaps. Respite from memory. There was a face he wasn’t sure he’d wanted to remember. But the rock in Mordor was the colour of his lord’s hair, the blasted plains the same shade of grey as his eyes, the heat like unto his embrace. There was nowhere Mairon could go that wouldn’t be _him_.

Once upon a time, his folk had known each other’s presence like a signature writ on the fabric of the world, but how quickly they had come to depend on meat and bones, as if they were no better than the Children of Ilúvatar. Mairon’s bones were tired. He’d worn this body for countless years, stretching it out or crumpling it back into whatever shape he required, but always with the same beating heart, the same skin, grating over and over his ribs and his knuckles and his sockets until it was threadbare. How much longer did he have, he wondered? There was still so much work to be done.

Around midday he was summoned to see the king. Mairon found him in what he had come to call the Gold Room, for the floors and ceiling were coloured such, and painted with many scenes of valour from the history of the Edain. Ar-Pharazôn was lounging on a divan, eating black grapes and wielding the mouthpiece of his wretched hookah.

“Ah.” The king sat up. “Tar-Mairon, there you are. Good.”

The Maia bowed his head. “You wished to see me, my lord?”

“Indeed I did.” Ar-Pharazôn flopped back amongst his rich pillows and let out a loud sigh. “This weather has me in a foul mood, my friend. I need distraction. You will tell me of life in Valinor.” He gestured to a seat beside him. “Come, come. Sit down.”

Mairon obliged stiffly. “I’m afraid I must disappoint you, my lord. I came out of the West before Valinor’s creation.” He shrugged. “I could tell you of Almaren, but I think it would pale in comparison.”

Ar-Pharazôn took a lazy puff on his hookah, and the sweet-smelling smoke made the Maia want to wretch. The king rolled over so that he was lying on his front, chin resting on the back of the divan. He grinned up at Mairon. Perhaps he thought he was being charming, for he was a comely man and all too aware of it, but Mairon only frowned and leaned away.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

The king groaned theatrically and clapped a hand to his brow. “So fair and yet so cold! Is that why our lord Morgoth took such fancy to you, I wonder?”

Mairon dug his nails into the wooden armrests until he could feel splinters. Ar-Pharazôn only laughed, and dragged on his hookah again.

“Oh come now, my friend,” he said. “I’m only teasing you.”

Mairon did not respond. He traced the outline of the plain gold band around his finger––the only ring that he now bore––and tried not to let his face give anything away. Only the rain on the domed roof above punctuated the silence, thick and soupy as the heavy clouds outside.

Eventually Ar-Pharazôn sat up properly and cleared his throat. “Did you love him very much?” The words sounded too small in the vastness of the chamber. Too small for what they asked.

Mairon looked up sharply. “Do you love your stable hands? Your captain of the guard? The courtesans who warm your bed?”

Ar-Pharazôn shook his head, smiling hesitantly. “I don’t know. Depends how well they please me, I suppose.” When Mairon said nothing, he leaned forward and put his hand on the Maia’s arm. “Forget I said anything.”

A beat, and the moment was over. The king lay back amid his cushions and grinned again. “I know what will cheer you up, my solemn friend.” He licked the tip of his finger and held it aloft. “Mm. Yes, as I thought. It is a cruel wind that blows today, Tar-Mairon. The so-called king of the Valar is displeased. Tonight is the night.”

Mairon blinked. “Tonight?”

“I think so.” Ar-Pharazôn glanced about. “Yes, this room will do very well. I will make the preparations; you have already provided ample instruction.”

“Sunset,” said Mairon. “It must be done at sunset.”

The king nodded thoughtfully. “As you say. I suppose that is a most uncanny time of day, for neither Arien nor Tillion reigns utterly overhead.”

“Indeed, my lord.”

 _You’ll believe anything,_ Mairon thought. _Idiot_.

 

* * *

 

The end of the day drew nigh, and still the rain had not let up. Mairon had been hoping for that soft golden light that comes with the setting of the sun––not for the esoteric qualities that Ar-Pharazôn imagined it would lend, no: simply because it set off his hair splendidly.

Of course there was the blood too. Blood always looked best at sunset.

At the appointed hour he donned a plain white robe with a cowl to cover his head as he crossed the courtyard. He felt less corporeal, as though he were the absence of what was around him, and when he moved the air made haste to fill in the spaces where his body had been, like it knew somehow that he wasn’t supposed to be there. As he passed by the plinth and the covered statue, he found himself slowing, and before he knew it he had stopped altogether.

_Did you love him very much?_

Strange how one’s emptiness could feel so very heavy. He raised his hand, inches from the straps that held the wrappings in place.

_Did you…?_

Mairon swallowed, squared his shoulders, and kept walking.

The Gold Room seemed smaller than usual, hemmed in by the shadows that gathered in the corners. Only two braziers had been lit, one on either side of the dais that had been constructed in the centre of the hall. The low firelight picked out the shades of red and black in the paintings on the walls, and dulled the glimmer of gold. The shadows of Ar-Pharazôn and his nobles bruised the mosaic floor. Mairon slipped off his boots and stole towards them. The little tiles of glass and stone were cold against his feet, but he ignored it; when he went barefoot, sometimes he could convince himself he was back in Almaren. Fitting, he thought, for tonight he felt like a sliver of his old self again. Wicked and holy.

“Good evening, Tar-Mairon,” said Ar-Pharazôn, his tone uncharacteristically reverent.

 _He really thinks this is going to work_. “Are we ready to begin, my lord?”

Ar-Pharazôn nodded, and then motioned to the pair of guards beside the main door. “Bring them in.”

The doors opened and in traipsed the most pitiful troupe of creatures Mairon had ever seen outside the pits of Angband. Men and women both, all chained in a line at the ankles and wrists. Their hair was loose and matted, their skin grey with weariness and dirt. Most kept their eyes downcast, but as they shuffled passed the king a coupled looked up, mouths opening and closing like fish gasping for air, though no coherent sounds could be discerned.

“What’s wrong with them?” Mairon asked softly, leaning in to Ar-Pharazôn’s ear. “Why don’t they speak?”

“We cut out their tongues,” the king replied. Mairon could see the flames from the torches reflected in his eyes. “I didn’t want them screaming. Screams invite questions, and until I am assured of tonight’s success, those are questions to which I do not yet wish to subject myself.”

There were nine prisoners in total, rounded up just this past week, Ar-Pharazôn explained. Known troublemakers. Devout followers of Ilúvatar. The king laughed darkly: one or two were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Will they suffice?” he asked.

Mairon shuddered, but it wasn’t the cold, or the sight of these wretched people. He hadn’t felt like this in centuries. Too long had he cowered under the guise of Annatar, or bowed at the feet of those who would stamp him out. Too long had he hidden in his land of shadows, with servants too young to recall him in his might. Gone were his wolves and his armour and his mace; gone were the balrogs and the dragons and the forges; gone was his herald, his title…his lord. Gone, but perhaps not lost.

“Yes. Yes this will do nicely.”

The courtiers of Ar-Pharazôn parted for him as he walked the last few steps to the dais and took his place above them. Then the king brought forth a great knife, as long as his forearm, and more akin in appearance to the blades wrought in the days of Angband than of fair Númenorian make. Mairon ran his finger along the keenest edge and nodded. The first prisoner was unchained and ushered up onto the dais, where he stood on trembling legs that seemed too thin to support him. He looked up at Mairon, his tired eyes suddenly full of wonder, for it seemed to all those in the hall then that the being before them was no long Tar-Mairon, but something much taller, much darker, with sharp teeth and burning eyes. Sauron he was, from their stories of old, and they feared him, and they loved him.

The Men of Númenor, they were: beloved of that brute Eönwë. For a moment Mairon was back in the passages of Angband, with Thuringwithil tugging at his wrist. _Fly, fly_. He saw the shadows on the wall––he saw what they did. _Savage_. That was the word that had caught in his throat as he’d beheld Manwë’s herald that day, deep in those dark tunnels, far from care or consequence. It was a word that had been ascribed to he himself on more than one occasion, certainly, but _Sauron_ had been a mechanism of warfare. Was not all fair in love and war? Mairon knew much of one and too little of the other, but what Eönwë did that day was neither. _Fly, fly,_ Thuringwithil had hissed. Oh the blood, so much blood…

 _If it’s blood you want,_ he thought.

Ar-Pharazôn and his noblemen raised their eyes to him, their faces upturned like those about to receive a blessing, and Mairon felt it again, at last. _Power._ He raised the great knife and drew it across the prisoner’s throat.

Blood ran down into the many bowls set about his feet, as body after body fell to the floor. The men watched with open mouths, but no one spoke. When it was done, Mairon lifted up one of the bowls and dipped his fingers into its quickly cooling contents. Upon his cheeks and chin and brow he painted sweeping shapes, and no doubt the likes of Ar-Pharazôn thought they were sigils that held some deeper meaning. The people wanted a show and he was giving it to them, but in truth Mairon merely liked the feeling of blood on his face.

The air smelled of copper and fright, and those upon whom his eyes turned shrank back under his gaze. Ar-Pharazôn came forward and Mairon pressed his bloody hand onto his face, leaving a broken scarlet handprint behind. The king shut his eyes and breathed in deeply, like it was the first breath Man ever took.

“Listen well,” Mairon said, and his voice was the only sound, as though the island itself was holding its breath in anticipation. “You have all been in the thrall of a false god. But as I severed the lives of these Faithless, so did I sever you from His power.” He tipped his head back and stretched out his arms, and as he did so two pages brought the remaining bowls and emptied them over him. Oh, how he would drown Eönwë’s whole wretched people in blood.

“He who Arises in Might, Lord of All and Giver of Freedom, accept these sacrifices as tribute, and these people as your followers. Show them the Way”––his arms slackened slightly, his voice quieting––“as you once showed me.”

He baptised each courtier as he had Ar-Pharazôn, and each departed the Gold Room with a silence so heavy the air seemed to tremble. At last, only he and the king remained. The blood on his face and hands was cold, and it pulled at his skin as it dried. He wanted nothing more than to return to his chamber and submerge himself in a steaming bath, preferably until the next Age, but as he bid the king goodnight and made to leave, Ar-Pharazôn caught him by the arm.

“Stay with me,” he said. He slurred his words like a man intoxicated. “You were right… I do not love the courtesans that warm my bed, but I think––I think I love you.”

“No you don’t,” Mairon replied. He tried to extricate himself from the king’s grasp, but Ar-Pharazôn grabbed a fistful of his hair.

“You would deny your lord––!”

Mairon spun on his heel, hitting the king’s elbow so hard he heard it crack. Ar-Pharazôn yelped and broke away, clutching his sorry limb.

“You are not my lord,” hissed Mairon. “Lay a hand on me again and you shan’t have to worry about living forever; I will open your throat with my teeth, do you understand?” He took a step back, looking the man up and down with a curl of his lip. “You forget your place, little king. And you forget mine.”

With that he turned and left, walking quickly and silently, caring little if he was spied in his bloodstained robe, until he was safely closed in the quiet of his room. Then his knees gave out and he sank to the floor, each breath coming in deep, wracking waves. His chest ached. His bones. That space between his eyes. Why did it all hurt so much? He clawed his fingers through his hair, trying to tear out any trace of Ar-Pharazôn’s hands, until at last he snarled and reached for the knife that he kept under his pillow. He cut off his hair at the shoulders. It was uneven and ugly and still matted with blood, and when he could no longer stand the face staring back at him, he put his fist through the mirror.

It wasn’t Ar-Pharazôn, he told himself, as the broken glass dug into his feet. Not really. It was the futility of it all. For a moment he thought he had been something again–– _someone_ again––but as soon as the magic cleared, he was just Mairon: underestimated and unheeded since his youth in Aulë’s forges. There was only one who had ever seen him as anything else, but no amount of sham ritual could ever undo _his_ fate. He was angry, so angry with himself, because in that briefest of moments he had believed that maybe–– _maybe_ ––it would make a difference. Maybe he could bring him back.

He wanted to be sick. That Ar-Pharazôn had thought even for a moment that he might… Mairon picked up a shard of glass from the floor and held it up to his face, pressing the sharp cold against his cheek. _See how much he wants you without your pretty shell_. Wicked and holy and so, so tired. He pressed the glass harder. _Go on. Do it. Show him the horror underneath._ He had learned how to love in the dark, how skin felt and where to place his hands, had studied his lover like cartography, and been learned by wrote in return. This body was not for anyone else.

_Do it!_

He held his breath and gritted his teeth, but at the last moment he tossed the glass aside, not staying to hear it shatter against the wall as he fled the room. Down the stairs and through the halls he ran, until at last he burst out into the courtyard, bloody robe streaming behind him in the wind. The rain beat his face and his hands and his feet, but he tore across the cobblestones until he reached the statue, and there he ripped at the covering, not bothering to undo the straps, but rending open the leather with his bare fingers, breaking his nails, until at last that face was revealed to him, and he staggered back.

“Why?” he cried. “ _Why?_ ” He wasn’t sure what he was asking, or indeed what answer could possibly satisfy him, but he screamed it and screamed it, dashing his knuckles on the marble and smearing it red. “I could have saved you!” He screamed until his voice gave out. His tears were tinged with the blood on his face, and he watched them mingle uselessly with the rain.

_Did you love him very much?_

Mairon curled up at the foot of the statue and shivered as the rain soaked him through. Above him, the empty eyes of Melkor’s cold marble face looked on, and saw nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> catch these hands at flurgburgler.tumblr.com


End file.
